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Real Life Ghost Stories

The Haunting Danielle series takes place at Marlow House—a haunted Bed and Breakfast along the Oregon coast. Its resident ghost is more charming than scary, but occasionally Danielle (owner of the B&B and the one who can see ghosts) encounters a not so charming spirit.

While the series is fiction, I’ve talked to many people who believe in ghosts—some who claim they’ve had encounters.

For those of you who would like to share your real life ghost story—please do so in the comment section below. True stories only!

7 comments on “Real Life Ghost Stories”

I went to college at the University of Montana-Western, and there’s a ghost named Matilda who haunts Matthews Hall, where I lived in the best floor. The story is Matilda attended Western back when it was the “Montana Normal School” (teacher college) in the early 1910s and got pregnant out of wedlock and hanged herself in one of the stairwells. Primarily, she haunts the third, uppermost floor, but one night, she came all the way down to the basement floor where my roommate and I resided. We were up goofing around, cracking jokes in the wee hours of the morning in the dark, and my roommate suddenly asks why I went into the other room of our two-room suite. I was still in my bed, but she SWEARS she saw me get up and walk into the other room. We also heard stories of small appliances (microwaves, TVs, curling irons, etc.) turning on without being turned on, people waking up with scracthes, things like that.

My daughter literally called me 30 minutes ago from Matthews hall where she is a freshman. She said she was sitting in her bed reading and her door handle started shaking Like someone was trying to get in. Thinking it was her roommate she let it go for several seconds before she got up, went to the door it stopped and know one was there. Immediately the sink faucet started lightly running she walked toward the sink and the handle turned by itself full blast!!! She is a little freaked out at the moment.

I heard a lot of stories like that when I lived in Matthews, and I don’t blame her for being freaked out! Bill Herrin (I think he’s still the head custodian; I think is office is over in JDC now) is the one who told me how and where Matilda died. If your daughter has a chance, she could ask him about it. It’s an interesting tale.

Many years ago when I was younger, about the age of twenty-two or three (give or take), I had spent the evening and well into the night at a wedding. It was in the summer months as I recall the evening was warm and I wasn’t wearing a jacket. It was late, very late, about 2 a.m. when I was driving home on the freeway.

At that point in time, I lived in an older area of the city. In itself, it was relatively safe place to be, however getting to that point, one had to venture through some areas that weren’t so friendly. As it happened, I ran out of gas on the freeway about a mile from the next exit. I guided my car to the shoulder and sat there for a minute. I was tired. I know the area and knew there was a gas station at the end of the exit. That meant walking to get there, buying their gas can and walking back to my car. Remember, this was well before the age of the cell phone. No ‘phone-a-friend’ or AAA was coming to my rescue.

Just as I got out of my car, another vehicle pulled up behind me. It was an old station wagon, light blue in color and several years old. Out steps this big fella, rather tall, at least compared to me and solidly built. He had a big blonde mop of tussled hair and he was sporting a white tee shirt and cut-off jeans. And he was bare-footed. He steps up and offers to take me down the road to the exit. I thanked him and we were off.

In the end, I got home safely. (I haven’t run out of gas since). So what’s so angelic about that, you ask? Nothing on the surface. I received help when I needed help. From my perspective, I was in no immediate danger other than getting hit by a car. However, after some time had passed, I had a revelation. As I was thinking about what had happened that night, it was if a veil had been lifted from my eyes and I saw the event clearly for what it was. The person who stepped to my aid was the spitting image of my cousin Tony, a big strapping farm-boy kind of guy with a heart as big as the ocean. Still, what’s so special about that? You didn’t recognize him.

The oddest ghost story I heard was from friends who moved when their son was three. They could sense presences in the house, but weren’t concerned. However the boy became upset fairly soon about the “three ladies” in his room, who scolded him, and told him “it’s not nice to lie”. Apparently two sisters who’d lived together remained, and so did another woman who lived and died at a different point. The problem was that while he could see all of them, and the two ghosts who’d (presumably) lived and died together could see him and each other, and the other woman could talk to him, neither the single nor the pair of ghosts could see each other. Seeing ghosts didn’t bother him, but having adults tell him he was lying when he wasn’t was very upsetting to the toddler. So his parents had to help their spirits to move on. This is the only example I’ve heard of where ghosts were on different frequencies from each other.